Saturday, January 31, 2015

Reuters - Activity in China's factory sector contracted in January for the first time in more than two years, an official survey showed, a far worse result than expected that will add to worries about the country's choppy economic outlook this year.

THIS IS BAD NEWS - ESPECIALLY WHEN COUPLED WITH EUROPE'S ECONOMIC WOES , THE SLOWDOWN LAST QUARTER IN THE USA, AND GENERAL GLOBAL POLITICAL INSTABILITY....

IT WON'T TAKE A HUGE NEGATIVE EVENT TO SEND PEOPLE STAMPEDING TO THE EXITS...

Following a protracted and contentious legal dispute over the rightful ownership of an east Jerusalem property, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday ruled against an Arab family that sought an injunction against its owner, the Elad Foundation.

The property in question, acquired last September by the foundation, a right-wing organization that uses funds from Jewish supporters in the US and elsewhere to buy residences in Arab districts, is located next to the City of David National Park, outside the Old City’s walls.

In her ruling, Judge Tamar Bar-Asher-Zaban dismissed the claim brought by members of the Qareen family, who are related to the Arab family that sold the property to Elad, as being without basis, and removed a temporary injunction.

“Not only did the plaintiffs hide information from the court, but it has also been determined that the plaintiffs do not possess any legal right whatsoever to the property in question and, as such, had no right to seek an injunction,” Bar-Asher-Zaban stated.

The court further ruled that the plaintiffs must pay Elad’s legal expenses.

So the family concealed evidence, and caused a whole lot of trouble that could've been avoided. For that, they most definitely should pay back the legal expenses.

MARIN LE PEN, GEERT WILDERS, NIGEL FARAGE, THE SWEDEN DEMOCRATS AND PEGIDA SAY IT'S TIME FOR EUROPE TO STAND UP FOR EUROPE.

THANKS TO THE INTELLECTUAL TERRORISM FROM THE PC BRIGADE, TIME IS RUNNING OUT; NEWSWEEK:

A lack of effective multilateral coordination between European Union member states is leaving the bloc open to infiltration by terrorists, according to experts, as the bloc’s border forces are overwhelmed by the numbers of illegal migrants and refugees attempting to reach Europe.

The lack of a coherent strategy on border control between member states is leaving the EU vulnerable to exploitation by people smugglers, as militants are being sent to Europe using “any means at their disposal” with the aim of conducting terror attacks in retaliation for Western involvement in the U.S.-led coalition against groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

THE FAILURE TO END THE FLOW OF JIHADISTS INTO EUROPE MEANS THAT THERE WILL BE MORE HORRIFIC ATTACKS THERE - MUCH WORSE THAN HEBDO, AND SOONER THAN ANYONE THINKS...

“So, let me get this straight. Your professors are liberal. The administration here is liberal. Your high school teachers were liberal. The mainstream media is liberal. The music industry is liberal. Hollywood is liberal. The art community is liberal. The fashion and publishing industries are liberal. And yet you people think you’re sticking it to the Man by agreeing with them?”

Being liberal is just about the least rebellious thing you can do on an elite college campus. At least libertarians rebel against bad economics and speech codes. But if you really want to break with the herd at an Ivy League school, do something unpredictable: be a Christian conservative.

ANOTHER LIE LEFTISTS DELUDE THEMSELVES WITH IS THE IDEA THAT GUN-LOVING, GOD-FEARING CONSTITUTION-FOLLOWING FOLKS ARE "RIGHT-WINGERS".

WE ARE NOT.

WE'RE THE REAL CENTRISTS, THE REAL MAINSTREAM; WE'RE TO FOLKS WHO STILL BELIEVE IN THE PRINCIPLES THAT THIS NATION WAS FOUNDED ON.

THE FACT THAT CONSTITUTIONALISTS HAVE FOR DECADES BEEN TREATED BY THE MASS MEDIA AS EXTREMISTS IS PROOF THAT THE MASS MEDIA HAS BECOME A PERVERTED AND BIASED MOUTHPIECE FOR THE LEFT.

TO MAINTAIN THE REVIVAL IN THE ELECTORATE THE TEA PARTY STARTED AND WHICH THE LAST ELECTION REINFORCED, WE NEED TO DISINFECT THE MASS MEDIA - AND THE ACADEMY.

WE NEED TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE ONCE AGAIN TO BE A TRADITIONAL, PATRIOTIC, CONSTITUTIONALIST ON CAMPUS AND BE CONSIDERED COOL.

There have been two high-profile stabbings in Tel Aviv in recent months committed by Arab residents of Judea and Samaria who illegally crossed the 1949 Armistice line - and yet a Jewish resident of a haredi suburb of the city on Tuesday was arrested bringing Arab illegals into the Tel Aviv area in his car trunk.

A 32-year-old Jewish resident of Bnei Brak, a haredi suburb of Tel Aviv, was arrested on Tuesday evening at a security point in Samaria on Highway 5.

After stopping at the checkpoint, a female security checker opened his car's trunk, where she discovered three Arab men trying to enter Israel illegally, lying in the compartment one next to the other.

The driver admitted under initial investigation that he received 250 shekels (just over $60) from each of the three illegal Arab entrants, and in exchange agreed to help them sneak into Israel, possibly to find illegal work - or else commit terrorist attacks.

All four men were brought in for investigation by the police.

There's more in the article, about other attempts made to smuggle these dangerous thugs into Israeli residencies, including by people who aren't Haredis. This spells an important lesson - that sometimes the people prolonging the danger come right from within our society, succumbing to the greed for money.

Lebanese militants fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli military convoy, touching off some of the heaviest clashes in the volatile area where the Syrian, Lebanese and Israeli borders meet since the sides warred in 2006.

Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded positions of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters, who responded by shelling Israeli targets along the frontier, the military said. Spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner reported casualties without giving details. Al Arabiya television said four Israeli soldiers were killed and a Spanish soldier with the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was caught in the crossfire and died.

The frontier area has been tense since an Iranian general and six Hezbollah fighters were killed Jan. 18 in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Syria. That assault, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied, heated up the proxy conflict between Israel and Iran, while threatening to plunge Israel and Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah into the kind of all-out war that engulfed them eight years ago.

Israel put the blame on Iran and linked it to nuclear talks between the Islamic Republic and world powers, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment on the record. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that his military “is prepared to respond forcefully” on all fronts.

There's a video of the attack here. It's obvious the UN doesn't care how this is costing lives of their own contributors, and another reason why they're unreliable.

So after allegedly condemning an assault influenced by the Koran and the Hadith, he goes right along and carries water for a taqqiya vehicle, and worse, implies he supports vandalism of a pro-Israel activist's property? I don't see the logic here. Some of those ads her group published were in support of Israel. What next, if Caroline Glick and Sarah Honig put out advertisements, he'll signal support for defacing their property too?

Kalban's retweets alone suggest he followed a common example among the weak: condemn barbarism one day, do a 360 the next. He sure isn't being a very inspiring writer with that MO.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Despite the criticism he has received, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner does not regret the decision he made to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in early March.

In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Boehner said he notified the White House of his decision only on the morning that he extended the invitation to Netanyahu.

"There's nobody in the world who can talk about the threat of radical terrorism, nobody can talk about the threat that the Iranians pose, not just to the Middle East and to Israel, our longest ally, but to the entire world, but Bibi Netanyahu," Boehner said in the interview.

Boehner then criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for failing to take the threat of terrorism and the Iranian nuclear threat seriously.

"The president is trying to act like it's not there," he said. "But it is there. And it's going to be a threat to our homeland if we don't address it in a bigger way."

He's right on this subject. Yes, Netanyahu is fit for addressing the issue, and if there's something Boehner's gotten right, this is it.

Today in Poland, was a memorial service for the liberation of Auschwitz towards the end of WW2:

More than 100 survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp arrived in Poland on Monday to participate in a World Jewish Congress event in Krakow marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet army's liberation of the notorious death camp in 1945. The survivors flew to Poland ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, which is being marked with commemoration ceremonies to be attended by world leaders and around 300 survivors from around the world, as well as teachers specializing in learning the lessons from the Holocaust.

"It is a great honor for us that you made it all the way out to this terrible place," WJC President Ronald Lauder said in Krakow. "You are the witnesses of what transpired here. The way you chose to live your life teaches us about the spirit of mankind. You focused on life even when they wanted you dead."

An atheist writer for The Federalist tells why Islam is far worse than Christianity in this day and age. It may be an atheist perspective, but it's one I can provide with an extension of attention given. He says:

Mohammed was a conqueror who gained worldly political power in his lifetime and used it to persecute opponents and impose his religion. He also fully enjoyed the worldly perks of being a tyrant, including multiple wives. Jesus, by contrast, was basically a pacifist whose whole purpose on earth was to allow himself to be tortured to death.

He even explicitly forbade his followers to use force to defend him. Here’s John, Chapter 18: “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear…. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

This does not imply that all Christians ought to be pacifists. But it certainly sets a tone for the religion. The life of the founder of a religion is held up to his followers as a model for how they should live their own lives. The life of Mohammed tells the Muslim that he should expect to rule, whereas the life of Christ tells the Christian he should expect to sacrifice and serve. Which leads us to a deeper doctrinal difference.

So despite his stance, he still acknowledges a specific difference between Islam and Christianity's founders. And there's more:

Christians started as a persecuted minority in a pagan society, so that gives them a certain comfort with being powerless. Those who find themselves out of step with the sinful modern world regard this as more or less the normal state of things.

The early history of Islam, by contrast, was further conquest and dominance, as Muslim invaders marched out into Persia and across North Africa. That’s why Muslims tend to look at the modern situation, in which other creeds and political systems are wealthier and wield greater military power, as an aberration that is not to be tolerated.

This history is connected to a specific doctrinal issue.

Yes, that's a pretty good observation there too. I don't agree with atheism - I believe there should be distinctions made between good and bad religions - but if you know where to look, you can find some atheists who can raise valid arguments for the right reasons.

Anti-jihad blogger Pamela Geller's advertisements against Islamofascism in San Francisco were defaced by a leftist group called Street Cred, whose tactics included using the Muslim Ms. Marvel to paste over Geller's paid for ads on buses. But what's really disturbing are any and all of the alleged entertainment sites that're openly condoning vandalism of somebody else's property. For example, Polygon, Bleeding Cool, IO9 and The Mary Sue. Even ComicBook may have gone that route. What makes this dreadful is how badly it reflects on pop culturalists, let alone comic book readers: it gives the impression they support criminal actions and disrespect for other people's property. I wonder what they'd say if those ads were published by 9-11 Families for a Safe America?

Maybe it isn't all that surprising some of these sites could go overboard and suggest vandalism is perfectly okay, instead of buying their own ad space. I've looked every now and then at The Mary Sue, and they're not a very impressive site. When they once interviewed animator Christy Marx, they wouldn't mention the near-gang rape seen in the premiering issue of the Amethyst remake. The same person who conducted the interview even gave a glowing review to one of Brad Meltzer's books, and another contributor to the site wrote at least one other gushy take on his writings. That's basically a "media enablers" MO, and if that's how they're going to go about, I don't think they speak for pop culture fans, female or otherwise.

As galling as this is, the silver lining is that a few of sites like Bleeding Cool were willing to either present an official of the exact ad being defaced, while CBR's Robot 6, which wisely refrained from actually condoning vandalism, explained what's seen on it:

According to SFGate, these banners — only the latest purchased by blogger Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative — went up on buses on Jan. 9, and feature an image of Adolf Hitler and Palestinian Muslim leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, who opposed Zionism. With the headline, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s In The Quran,” the ads encouraged an end to aid to all Islamic countries.

As some commentors to CBR tell them, al-Husseini's anti-Zionism doesn't even begin to describe his evil. For example:

It was a bit more than that. Al-Husseini was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a staunch Nazi ally, recruiting Muslms for the Waffen-SS and spending quite a bit of time in Germany, meeting repeatedly with Hitler. In 1943, he issued a proclamation:

“It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to … drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries….Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [endgültige Lösung] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world…”

BEFORE THEY VOTE AGAINST BIBI, ALL LEFT-LEANING ISRAELIS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES THIS:

DO I WANT TO SUPPORT THE PARTY LIST THAT' SUPPORTED BY FATAH AND HAMAS?

IF THEY TRULY LOVE ISRAEL, THEN THEY MUST ANSWER NO, AND VOTE FOR LIKUD.IF THEY THINK APPEASING THE ENEMY WILL WORK - AND VOTE FOR THE APPEASING DOVES, THEN THEY WILL BE CONDEMNING ISRAEL TO THE SAME FATE AS THE SUDATENLAND AND CRIMEA.

For many years, the Steimatzky bookstore chain has distributed and sold the French "Charlie Hebdo" satirical magazine in Israel. Now Steimatzky has been caught in the eye of the storm following the terrorist attack on the magazine's offices in Paris earlier this month by Muslim extremists, which killed 12 journalists and policemen.

Steimatzky has received 600 copies of the special "survivors' edition," which was issued after the attack, and had been set to go on sale at the bookstore's Ayalon Mall outlet in Ramat Gan.

However, strong reactions from Israel's Arab sector, persuaded Steimatzky to sell the magazines over the Internet rather from the store.

MK Masud Ganaim (United Arab List) sent a warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying "The State and the booksellers will be responsible for the results," if Steimatzky sells the weekly.

A source at Steimatzky said, "We are not giving up on the sale but we are talking about a small number of magazines, and the chaos that the demonstration against it might cause will hit the regular sales of the store. So we prefer that the Charlie Hebdo sales will be over the Internet, and sales at the store will be unaffected."

Oh, put a lid on it. They're caving and they know it. Lital Shemesh says this is just capitulation in a place where it's very ill-advised to cower.

Nevertheless, the issue sold out quick in the online sales, and as shady as Yisrael Beitenu is, they were willing to protest the bookstore's cowardice.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Billionaire investor George Soros has given a damning verdict on the launch of the European Central Bank's (ECB) trillion-euro quantitative easing program, warning that that it will create bubbles in the region's asset markets.

"My main concern that it will make divergence between rich and poor bigger than it already is," he said at a CNBC panel at theWorld Economic Forum in Davos Friday.

"It will benefit the owners of assets and actually wages will remain under pressure through competition and unemployment."

He warned that he would have "political consequences" and will also have an effect on international currency markets.

"The sheer size of the massive injection and the duration, and so on, will have undoubtedly an effect...If I were still active in the business I could see some fairly substantial moves coming and financial stability can create dislocations and turmoil from time to time."

On Breitbart News Saturday at the Iowa Freedom Summit, former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said President Barack Obama is “delusional” for declaring in his State of the Union address last week that ISIS was on the run.

Noting that ISIS just executed a Japanese hostage this weekend and citing recent terror attacks in Paris, Bolton said that Obama can talk about terrorists being on the run, but “it’s obviously not true.” Bolton said Americans are hearing about the ISIS beheadings and reading reports about ISIS gaining strength in the Middle East and wondering, “who’s defending our country?”[...]

Bolton said that voters are usually ahead of politicians in understanding the significance of national security issues, which he said are “only going to get more important” in 2016.

Bolton's got some good points. This year, people may be more awake than ever to the dangers we face in the modern world.